Investigate, Review, Reflect, Act

Get to know your team#

In your notebook, write down your team members’ names and next to each name write down the names of anybody in that individual’s personal life: spouse, children, pets, parents, anything you can think of. Don’t stalk them to find out the answer—rely solely on your conversations and meetings to answer this.

In your next 1:1 with each team member, ask them one of the following questions:

• Who’s the most stressed person you work with?

• If you had an extra hour/week to work on anything, what would you do with it?

• What’s a time when you saw a company (not just this one) change its culture (positively or negatively)? How did it happen?

• If you were invited to give a TED talk, what would it be on?

Reflect on competence#

• For each of the team members on your team, write down ways you could help them improve their competence.

Reflect on autonomy#

• Examine your current processes and practices. What sort of “gated check-ins” are in place that potentially reduce your teams’ autonomy? Determine why they were introduced, what purpose they were intended to serve, and whether they still serve that purpose. If their origin and purpose are a mystery, theorize what you can do to remove them.

Investigate purpose#

Ask your team to describe where they fit in the larger organization by answering the following questions:

• How do the things they do map to the revenue stream for the company?

• What teams do they depend on?

• What teams depend on them? What are all the teams further “upstream” or “downstream” from them?

Ask your team (and yourself, if you don’t know) to describe the company’s purpose beyond profits.

Reflect on your motivation#

Think about why you wanted to become a manager. Was it intrinsic or extrinsic motivation? Has your motivation changed at all? If it has, why do you think it changed?